Is Pleasure a factor?
By all means, only not in the sense of numb surrender. More like, let's make this good time, scrape (Hearty Laughter)
How does a good time scrape?
Typically it involves lots of abrasion directed at any unmentionables who may or may not be blemishes at yer love-feasts.
"Love" in what sense?
In the truest of sense. In the sense of abrasive surrender, where feeling good is at least secondary
Secondary to what?
All sorts of things. Mainly, if a song reaches a point where it doesn't feel good we know why.
Why it doesn't feel good?
Right, as in you figure out the reasons & decide if you care. The loudest bullet is saved for the first moron who yells for the punchline.
And what if they don't laugh?
Mostly it's their loss, we know other jokes, other songs. Chances are they're not laughing because the whole thing's at their expense. Maybe they realize we're not playing along.
With their Joke?
Exactly, because we've already heard it and it's not that funny.
What is funny to you?
That people still structure their lives around the telling of the punchline. That anything that's not in some sense a version of the original joke is not worth hearing or singing about.
Can you really sing?
Not Yet.
Do you consider your songs to be jokes?
At this point yes since no popular context exists for them to be taken in seriously .
It is possible to take them seriously?
Yes, but like most things you have to laugh hard first or it won't work.
Why work to enjoy something?
Because laughing isn't hard work. The harder you laugh the easier it gets.
Until what?
Until all the other jokers catch on and start roaring along. When they figure out the joke's on them, we'll see if they keep roaring.
Do you want people to laugh at themselves?
It's definitely cheaper.
Is lo-budget a big part of the aesthetic?
It all has to do with how low. If you go low enough you realise yer free and that's important but not critical. So then maybe you realise "free" isn't a matter of trade and barter and maybe you try reconciling conflicting concepts like "true love" & "free". That's really where you start losing people. It's definitely easier to stick with the common definition of "free" than to redefine "true love" but even that is really beside the point.
So "Yes" or "No" on the lo-budget part?
Yes
Is that meant to defit hi-budget industry types?
It's meant as a kick in the head to anyone who thinks there's only one way to pour yourself into yer stupidity. Notice we don't say "art". The whole credibility thing makes us want to kick ourselves in the heads and we probably would if it ever seemed fun.
Fun, at the risk of self indulgence?
Right, since that's the only way to find new fun.
Isn't the promise of "new fun" an old thing?
Only because people keep promising and not coming thru. But even if you don't believe Trumans' Water can deliver new fun there's still fun to be had watching old fun mock itself.
Does that explain the song titles?
No the song-titles are more about the laugh-hard part. We have this idea that you can be loud, fun & intense without being angry or dogmatic which we're always trying to pull off & at this point song titles seem like a good way to indicate it. They're also meant to piss off people who have set ideas as to what a proper song-title is, just like the songs themselves. It is the fly-in-the-face-of-old-fun part.
And what if someone says Trumans Water is old fun?
Initially we like it because we think they never have fun. In most cases that's a big letdown because what they have in mind is not really newer fun.
Can't new fun involve subtlety?
Yes but after a solid 15 years of being smacked silly with the idea of subtle new fun you start wondering why people insist on never admitting to having their senses dulled considerably by bands like Borbetomagus, Caroliner, Sun City Girls etc. This to us comes a lot closer to following thru on claims, of which many are less-deserving & have been making.
Less deserving of what?
Of being credited with having their cake & eating it too. We know from electric experience how hard it is to eat yer cake. We also know having it is harder, so kind hearted souls the globe over have devised a flux in which they imagine the ideal cake & then decides who gets to eat it. Only problem is, that cake never exists, so who cares who gets to eat it? No way, not us.
What do you mean cake?
Exactly, nobody knows. Especially if it's not there to begin with. It's flux, nothing.
So what's the problem?
You mean, how can it hurt anyone?
Yeah, since it's imaginary right?
Right, only every now and then you've got to deal with people who see reality as a question of squatter's rights.
Objective reality?
Yeah, which gets rarer by the second, like bread & water being `luxuries' in the sense that you can always eat dirt. . .
or invisible cake.
Here's the thing: The cake flux people know full well by now that nobody can live on invisible cake, including them. So the only way to stay in the cake-flux business is to keep a revolving cast of players & convince everybody that the flux reverse is the concept of reality. As in not only does imaginary cake become "real" it also makes tangible cake foodstuffs "irreal", something you'd want to trade for flux-cake.
So nobody suffers except any idiots who agree to the trade, right?
The hoodwinking isn't the problem. We'd just as soon give up our cake, free, as get swindled out of it. The suffering starts when you realise yer surrounded by good people betting small fortunes on losing horses & then questioning the idea behind the finish lines.
What do you know about gambling debt?
Never let anybody pull up next to you on the Brooklyn Bridge (one last round of roaring)
Send us strange things
Trumans Water
PO Box 151691
San Diego CA
92115 USA